Wednesday, 25 April 2012

Scoring Orc's Drift

I'm hoping to play out the fourth and final battle from the Bloodbath at Orc's Drift narrative campaign this summer, before moving on to Terror of the Lichemaster. This is the finale, with all three of the orc tribes led by King Fyar himself converging on Orc's Drift. I'm hoping to be able to stage this with six players around the table, if at all possible.

To determine when the respective tribes arrive at Orc's Drift, how many troops they have, and how many more orcs I need, I just want to review the action from the three preliminary encounters.

This was a convincing victory for the orcs, who wiped out an elf garrison in fairly short order, with the aid of the giant Guthrum Mane. The elves made a number of tactical errors, including sending half the garrison out of the stockade on a sortie, where they were cut down willy nilly, and dispatching their commander Erdolas Thringal in pursuit of the escaping half orc spy. One elf managed to flee the scene - all the others were slain, although the spy was killed too. The orcs lost seven KIA. Kelvin and Ben commanded the orcs between them, with Sebastian playing the elves.

In this encounter some dwarf deserters, prospecting for gold, ended up on the receiving end of the Severed Hand orcs. We played this scenario three times, with the intention of averaging out the results. The orcs were accompanied for this battle by a pack of 10 dire wolves.

The first battle saw Kelvin as the orcs playing against Ric. It ended up as a disaster for the orcs, as they were routed and their leader slain. In the second, I played the dwarves and Ben took the orcs. I toned down the two dwarf leaders for this battle, and they were wiped out. The orcs got the gold, but their leader Hagar Sheol was again killed and they lost five warriors and seven wolves. In the final battle, Sebastian took the orcs and I again played dwarves. One dwarf escaped with two bags of gold, two orcs were killed and five wolves.

Linden Way saw some men defending a small village to give its inhabitants time to flee as the Kwae Karr orcs, led by Kelvin and Manoj, assaulted the settlement. I gave the Kwae Karr King Fyar's personal bodyguard of five armoured uruk hai to support them. The defenders, under Ben's command, were wiped out, although four villagers escaped. The Kwae Karr lost four warriors and one uruk hai was slain.